Kindling Week 3: Maniacal Purpose

Welcome to Edition III of the Kindling Weekly!

A Behind The Scenes of two best friends building their dream company and sharing highlights from our podcast.

It’s Week 3! Welcome new, welcome old, welcome all 👏.

To the newcomers, in this newsletter you’ll find updates on all content under the Kindling brand as well as the behind the scenes as we build our bigger business.

In the few weeks since we’ve launched, it has been hectic to say the least 🏃.

This week we also release new content types 🚀. This includes our latest vlog, a Build in Public podcast, a podcast we did with Human Health Founder, Georgia Vidler, and finally insights from talking to Katherine Boyle, the queen 👑 of American Dynamism.

Best,

Adam

(Podcasting) Katherine Boyle

This week we interviewed Katherine Boyle, a partner at a16z (read Andreesen Horowitz), the world's largest venture capital group. Katherine leads their American Dynamism practice which invests in founders and companies supporting the national interest such as aerospace, defense, safety, education, and manufacturing.

This was a special episode for us since we’ve long revered her writing and ideas.

Watch the podcast on Youtube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

She's made investments in companies like Anduril Industries, Hadrian, and Hallow, and is a “contrarian” in the true sense of the word, known for investing in defence-tech before it was popular. Katherine's also a deep thinker and comes up with her own guiding philosophies to understanding the world and its founders. Some of her best thinking includes great essays like ‘The Case for American Seriousness’ and ‘How to Win the Fight for America’, from her experience as a journalist.

Time Poor? Here are our Top 10 Insights!

1. American Dynamism is not a built movement but a reaction to already occurring dynamics in the US. It’s the investment into the core industries (such as housing, education, transportation, and public safety) that underpin the American dream and make it a reality.

2. Katherine and her partners at a16z believe technology is the backbone for building order within our civilisation and always will be. They chose to build for America because they know that American dynamism is true, and the key to a safer and more prosperous world.

3. You don’t need an MFA in Fiction to learn storytelling. If you’re a founder looking to learn how to speak in front of an audience and how to tell narratives to investors, standup comedians are your best resource.

4. You can’t manufacture founders, just like you can’t manufacture political candidates, but you can see extraordinary founders like Elon Musk emerging and catch them before they do.

5. “To find the next great founder, look for serious people.” She argues that serious people have developed a “thesis” on life, and often talk about weird or new things like becoming an “interstellar species” or building a meditation app for Catholics.

6. The modern media industry is dying. And the big question is why? Journalism as a media form has been the first to go, and Katherine believes the other communications mediums will follow. Understanding this seismic shift and responding accordingly has been key to Katherine’s professional trajectory.

7. Socratic questioning underpins a lot of Katherine’s childhood. Having been raised by a parent who studied Aristotle and Socratic thinking, Boyle credits her open-minded and open-ended approach to navigating the world of investing to these formative learnings from her father.

8. A good family and a good community are essential to forming good personality traits and character. The lack of a community with firm belief systems and a sense of purpose has led many to loneliness and nihilism.

9. Most startups replicate the religious ideas of having a “mission” and a sense of “purpose”, and build a community around that. Having a maniacal sense of purpose is great for combating the loss of old systems, beliefs, and traditions in today’s society.

10. ⁠⁠A culture of service to the country, community, and public can better American culture overall. A return to an obligation of service, not necessarily just military service, needs to replace the current voluntary model and apply to both men and women.

Life Behind the Scenes

Our new vlog!

We released our first vlog! 👏 We aim to make the best and most authentic vlogs in the technology world.

In this episode we hosted Alex Lieberman, the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Morning Brew, who shared his struggles and insecurities. Alex’s insights into the art of selling came in at an important time.

We think through how to interview differently, look after our health post-injury, and score a free dinner hosted by Airtree at the Butler.

We also share the backstage work that goes into interviewing giants like the godfather of Australian VC and co-founder of Airtree, Daniel Petre, and meet with the newsletter king of Australia, Alex Brogan.

Finally, our first BIP podcast has been released! There, Sachin and I get real about business and life. You can watch it here or listen to it on Spotify or Apple. This episode really seems to be resonating!

On Building

The week that was…

On Monday we hosted an amazing podcast with Georgia Vidler of Human Health. They have raised the biggest pre-seed investment round in Australian history for an all-female startup.

We can see why.

She’s incredible and she’s tackling a super important problem with a large market.

For this episode, we’re doing something special. We’re coupling the podcast with some filming at the Human Health office which we did on Friday, so we can make some extra special, new content.

What We’re Focusing On

We’re trying to stay laser focused on two things:

1. Making great content

2. Making sales (i.e. advertising slots)

On the content front, we’re putting some big bets on a really high-quality new type of production we’re pursuing alongside our vlogs. You can watch the latest vlog here! This is no.1 and we’ll try to release them every week or so.

On the sales front, we’re just trying to find the right sponsors. We have an extremely high-quality audience — basically all founders, operators, investors and developers — so for the right person, it’s really valuable. This means a lot of meetings, and back and forth.

We’re pushing all our other social channels for broader brand awareness. This means we spend 30 minutes on Wednesday making a whole heap of TikToks. As they say, “Men used to go to war and now they create silly little TikToks”.

And even more so we are focusing on how to be world-class in packaging. We can’t stress enough how important packaging is for algorithmic platforms.

Content We Love

1. Who we’re learning aesthetics from: @callherdaddy on Instagram

2. Who we’re finding really insightful: Rory Sutherland on Modern Wisdom

3. Who we’re listening to about a near-death experience in Africa: Russ Cook on The Diary of a CEO

Coming Up

We have an interview with, who some would proclaim, is the godfather of Australian VC, Daniel Petre, co-founder of Airtree. He’s now spending time with his organisation, Start Giving, and focusing on philanthropy in Australia.

We’ve been making lots of new content and we want to double down on what you love. We’d love it if you could give us feedback 💯.

Liked what you read? We’ll spend more time on it. Help us grow by sharing!